NEW YORK – New Yorkers experienced at first hand the celebrated Lahore Literary Festival (LLF) featuring lively discussions on a variety of subjects and showcasing Pakistan’s cultural mosaic of music, art, film-making and literature that kept the audience engrossed for more than seven hours in a packed hall of the Asia Society.
“LLF is the most effective use of soft power,” Kati Marton, an award-winning American author and journalist, remarked while assessing the impact left behind by the festival. She said that the four-year-old festival provided the people in this creative city an opportunity to explore the cultural advancement in Pakistan.
“We are proud that for the first time a festival of ideas from Pakistan has been taken overseas,” Pakistan’s UN Ambassador Dr Maleeha Lodhi said in her welcoming remarks at the start of the proceedings, spread over seven sessions. “Today, the amazing outpouring of art and literature in Pakistan is the most forceful response to a tiny minority that seeks to impose an alien orthodoxy,” she said.
And Ahmed Rashid, a prominent author, said that LLF was being used to counter extremism in Pakistan.During the course of discussions on ‘The Promise of Pakistan’ and ‘Educating Pakistan,’ speakers calls for re-asserting Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s vision for the country – ademocracy guaranteeing fundamental rights to all its citizens irrespective of their beliefs.
Former foreign affairs minister Hina Rabbani Khar made a strong case for greater efforts to make Pakistan of Quaid’s dreams, saying the growing intolerance and extremism was badly hurting the country. Pakistan needed to strengthen its democratic institutions to provide justice to the people and thereby creating unity, she said.
Raza Rumi, an author and television journalist, referred to the Quaid’s policy speeches, and said the father of the nation wanted a liberal and modern state and not a religious one.
Speaking to ABC-TV’s Amna Nawaz, businessman and philanthropist, Syed Babar Ali said that the Quaid wanted citizenship, not religion, as the founding principle of the new state. “Quaid’s main motivating factor was to provide opportunity to Muslims that they could not enjoy in an undivided India,” he said.
During a discussion on US-Pakistan relations, moderated by New York Times columnist Roger Cohen, wife ofUS special representative Richard Holbrooke and author Marton backed the moved to talk to the Taliban in an effort to resolve the conflict in Afghanistan. Ahmad Rashid said that the US policy to isolate the Haqqani network from the Taliban would not work and a better strategy was needed to move forward.
Heregretted that US President Barack Obama had not personally engaged himself to deal with the Afghan crisis, noting that America was in fact walking away from the region. While blame was being piled on Pakistan, he said that the government in Afghanistan had miserably failed to deal with surging Taliban, and the promise of President Ashraf Ghani to turn the country around was nowhere to be seen.
Marton said that Holbrooke wanted to develop strategic ties with Pakistan, not transactional relations. Both Marton and Rashid strongly criticised the utterances of Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump, saying he had no policy.When Stephen Cohen of the Brookings Institution, who is an expert on South Asia, spoke of the army influence in Pakistan and the need for civil/military balance, Raza Rumi pointed out that the country has a successful civilian transfer of power in 2013.
But Cohen went on say that because it was influential, the US at times dealt with the army instead of civilian governments. To this, HinaKhar said that the US should always talk to elected governments. By doing so, Washington would be strengthening democratic institutions, she said.Pakistan’s internal security problemsstemmed from allowing its territory to be used for training the people to fight the 1979 Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, she said.
She said that the United States was responsible for creating the rebel groups, some of whom subsequently turned against Pakistan. The Pakistan Army had now stabilized the situation through anti-militant operations, she said. In the course of a discussion on the contemporary art in Pakistan, leading artist, educator and curator Salima Hashmi spoke of the tremendous progress in the field of arts despite challenges.
A string of young artists, some from remote areas of Balochistan, had joined the ranks. Salima Hashmi called for greater patronage of artists. Amin Jaffar moderated the group, which included Sadia Shirazi and Salman Toor. The message from the group discussing Urdu literature – Dr Azra Raza, the moderator, Tajira Naqvi, Frances Pritchett and Arfa Sayeda– wasfor the people to read Urdu books so that it stays alive, after papers were read on Esmat Chughtai and Sadaat Hassan Manto.
US-based prominent author Bapsi Sidhwa, who spoke to the audience on Skype, called LLF a bold step and said it was rendering great service to promoting literature.Pakistan’s Consul General in New York Raja Ali Ejaz presented a Lifetime Achievement Award to SahrahSuleri, a well-known author. During the concluding session on Lahore, kites and popular culture, well-known film and television personality Sarmad Khoosat spoke about various period of developments of films and TV play the changes they underwent during various regimes in Pakistan.
Moderated by Maryam Wasif Khan, the group was composed of Ammar Bellal, and Sadia Sheppard. Earlier, Rachel Cooper, director of the Global Performing Arts and Special Cultural Initiatives at the Asia Society, welcomed the gathering to the festival, saying it would help promote and strengthen partnerships among peoples of the two countries.Razi Ahmed, who is LLF’s founder and CEO, said spoke of LLF’s partnership with the festival and said it had brought ideas and showcased Pakisan’s talent.
“For four years now, we’ve had the privilege of bringing some of the most creative and insightful voices in the world to Pakistan’s cultural capital to engage with our writers, artists and audiences. We are delighted now to be taking some of Pakistan’s finest to the creative capital of the US.”The festival was rounded off late Sunday evening with grand Qawwali performance by an eight-member ensemble – the Saami Brothers.
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